Under-the-Radar Ideas to Improve American Energy Policy that Could Pass Congress this Year

Any Delawarean will tell you energy bills are too expensive. The price to heat and cool our homes just keeps rising.

One easy way to bring down costs quickly: Make homes more energy efficient.

We have a program that’s been doing just that for 50 years. It’s called the Weatherization Assistance Program. It saves the more than 7 million families who’ve participated an average of $300 every year by helping pay for insulation, air sealing and better HVAC systems. As those households use less energy, they reduce pressure on our energy infrastructure, helping keep prices from spiking and protecting our environment.

Weatherization is one of the rare climate policies supported by Democrats and Republicans alike. Sen. Susan Collins and I have a bill to improve the Weatherization Assistance Program and make sure it can continue through 2030. The companion bill in the House passed unanimously out of committee — and it has a real chance in the Senate, too.

If we’re going to pursue the all-of-the-above approach that’s necessary to bring down energy costs and ensure we have the energy we need to stay ahead in the race for AI, improving and strengthening weatherization assistance is an easy call.

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons represents Delaware.

The most consequential energy issue in Washington may also be the most underappreciated: permitting reform. America has the abundant low-cost resources, technology, capital and workforce to remain the global leader in energy — but our own permitting processes are standing in our way. Having spent 40 years in the private sector before coming to the Senate, I have seen firsthand how our current regulatory system — governed by well-meaning but outdated laws from the 1970s — is slowly strangling our nation’s ability to lead in this fast-paced world ahead of us.

I am encouraged by the bipartisan momentum to pass meaningful permitting reform this year — a growing coalition of my colleagues across both political parties are fed up with the status quo. We have a narrow window before the end of this Congress to enact a durable, technology-neutral plan that helps build all forms of energy infrastructure. By establishing predictable reviews, preventing the weaponization of permitting laws, and providing greater certainty after permits are issued, we can unlock private investment here in the U.S. to deliver our abundant low-cost energy without costing taxpayers a dime. This would restore America’s legacy as a nation of builders and lower utility bills, and meet the enormous energy demands of reindustrialization and the AI revolution.

Republican Sen. Alan Armstrong represents Oklahoma.

Access to more natural gas has made coal uneconomical, so the U.S. relies on it less and less to produce energy. This substitution has dramatically lowered C02 emissions. But even small methane leaks from gas production and distribution offset its climate benefits. Methane is 70 times as potent a climate agent as C02.

Notably, the oil and gas industry has made significant advances to control methane due to customer demand. Europe, Japan and Korea, where leadership is focused on reducing energy costs while combatting climate change, want “clean” natural gas. In response, industry has developed technology to detect and prevent methane leaks.

But methane regulation has been unreliable and uncertain. Obama issued rules. Trump repealed them. Biden issued rules, but Trump repealed those, too. Companies hate this back and forth, and many asked to leave the Biden regulations in place, just for certainty’s sake.

A statute that outlasts any presidency would protect the environment and give businesses certainty. Big Oil is ready. Smaller companies could get extra time, technical help and financial aid before facing fines.

Good legislation would slow global warming, help overseas sales and lower the political temperature about natural gas. Kumbaya.

Democratic Rep. Scott Peters represents California’s 50th District.

Americans are grappling with an energy affordability crisis. Utility prices continue to rise at unprecedented rates across the country as the growing demand for electricity — driven in part by AI data centers — increasingly strains the grid. While much of the debate in Washington is divided along party lines, investing in and unlocking the power of geothermal energy — a renewable source of electricity produced by drilling deep and capturing the Earth’s heat — enjoys broad bipartisan support.

Major advances in geothermal technology have been made, but the industry requires more federal support to scale up and meet the needs of the energy transition. Congress has already demonstrated bipartisan support for geothermal energy through a package of bills that have passed either in committee or the full House. These bills would provide much needed financial support in the early stages of research and development and will help bring projects online faster without sacrificing environmental protections or community engagement.

States across the country are already taking action on geothermal energy. Congress should follow suit and pass legislation that would be a positive step for U.S. energy policy.

Holly Bender is chief program officer of the Sierra Club.

Energy demand is rising fast. Supply isn’t keeping up. But new projects are increasingly facing community opposition from Americans rightly concerned that development won’t bring tangible benefits — either through local energy supply or through lower bills.

My organization, California Forward, is helping advance an initiative that offers one solution: proactively creating development zones for clean energy industrial development. Here’s how it works: In return for government support — grants, loans, procurement preferences — these zones will offer up preferential access to industrial land, interconnection, rail and logistics support, skilled workforce nearby, or other assets essential to building out critical energy infrastructure, along with clear and streamlined permitting. Zone access and governance must come from councils formed by community groups and local governments — the only people with the power to ensure priority siting and permitting, which are local land use issues in nearly every U.S. state, and the power to reduce litigation risk that can come from community opposition.

Zone-based development is familiar in international development. The Opportunity Zone program proves bipartisan appetite for this kind of approach. Let’s launch 10-15 advanced industrial zones across the country, with the goal of getting community-supported energy generation up and running within 18 months in every region. It could be the start of a new energy industrial revolution — this time with locals in the driver’s seat.

Kate Gordon is CEO of the nonprofit California Forward. She is also a strategic adviser at Advanced Industrial Zones, an initiative to promote zones that proactively align the right ingredients for industrial development.

Households across the country are struggling with skyrocketing electricity bills, and our grid is straining under the weight of natural disasters, increased demand and decades of underinvestment. We urgently need to bring more clean energy online and invest in a modernized electric grid. But in the meantime, we must make better use of the infrastructure that’s already been built.

Enter Grid-Enhancing Technologies (GETs). GETs are tools that enable grid operators to utilize existing powerlines at a higher capacity. They include higher performance conductor materials or more advanced software than what was available when the powerlines were built. For example, advanced power flow control devices enable grid operators to redistribute power away from congestion and toward lines with available capacity, which also improves reliability.

Deploying more GETs won’t address all our energy and grid needs, but it’s the fastest, lowest-cost, lowest-impact way to reduce bills today and avoid locking communities into increased pollution from new, unnecessary fossil-fuel plants. And members of Congress have already demonstrated interest: Related bipartisan legislation is actively being considered by congressional committees. Incentivizing the adoption of GETs is a commonsense step toward building an energy system that delivers affordable, reliable and clean electricity for everyone.

Meg Slattery is a staff scientist at Earthjustice.

Energy powers our economy. Policies shaping its future must allow American computing capacity to grow, while promoting both affordability and clean energy.

Artificial intelligence and clean energy adoption are transforming the global economy all at once. Data center development around the United States poses risks by increasing utility bills and local resource usage. Clean energy — rapidly scalable and cost competitive — is one of the best tools to combat both trends. In New Jersey, a new ratepayer relief plan will insulate ratepayers from rising costs by offering priority permitting for data centers that pay to reduce energy demand elsewhere in the grid, including through household energy upgrades such as heat pumps, solar panels and batteries. In Minnesota, a 2025 law imposes a fee on large-scale data centers to fund energy conservation projects for low-income households, as well as mandating that increased energy supplied to the grid for data center use does not delay the state’s commitment to 100% clean electricity by 2040. These structures can work to grow domestic clean energy capacity while protecting consumers from the financial burdens of AI.

These are reasonable reforms that allow data centers to move forward, while prioritizing clean energy. There are other options being actively debated — New York State has paused data center development and many have called for public ownership or government equity stakes — but those are another discussion entirely.

Heather Boushey is a professor of practice at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. She served in the Biden administration as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers.

After the two largest drawdowns — during the 2022 price spike and the 2026 Iran war — the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has fallen to its lowest level since 1983. Those releases showed how much emergency oil stocks still matter even though the United States is the world’s largest oil producer and a net petroleum exporter. Congress should fund a refill.

The United States long maintained the world’s largest strategic oil stockpile. But the Energy Information Administration now estimates that China controls nearly 1.4 billion barrels in strategic inventories, far more than the United States. That gap matters because reserves confer economic power during global disruptions.

Congress should also establish refined-product reserves holding gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Recent attacks on refineries have made fuel prices climb even faster than rising crude oil prices. The United States helps moderate those global prices by exporting large volumes of refined fuels. During a severe refining disruption, the United States could release stored fuel at home while allowing American refineries to continue supplying allies and global markets. Congress can strengthen domestic resilience without retreating from America’s indispensable role as an energy exporter.

James Coleman is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

This spring, Congress overwhelmingly voted to reauthorize the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) programs. For over 40 years, these programs have fueled American innovation by allocating 3.65% of federal research and development funding for competitive grants to help small businesses develop new technologies. This small investment has an outsized impact. The Small Business Technology Council estimates that SBIR/STTR programs return $12 to the economy for every $1 invested and have supported more than 2,100 firms that have been acquired and over 800 that have gone public. The programs have advanced technology such as Bluetooth, LASIK and GPS — and the digital satellite communications that catapulted Qualcomm to success.

But Congress’ work is not done. The Department of Energy recently moved its SBIR/STTR programs into the Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC), which is working to streamline application and award requirements and strengthen commercialization. Congress should provide robust funding to OTC in FY2027 to support these efforts and other technology acceleration programs under its purview and reauthorize OTC to reflect its growing mission. DOE’s applied research and development offices also need stable funding to ensure an adequate SBIR/STTR set-aside.

Finally, legislative guardrails are essential to protect these investments amid recent project cancellations and a proposed regulation expanding grant termination authority. These steps are politically feasible and urgently needed to strengthen America’s economy, energy security and competitiveness.

Lynn Abramson is president of the Clean Energy Business Network, a nationwide, nonpartisan organization serving as the small business voice for the U.S. energy economy.